Cook County Sheriff’s Police Save Second Person’s Life with Naloxone

Posted on May 3rd, 2018

COOK COUNTY, IL – A Skokie man found unresponsive Wednesday morning in a courthouse
bathroom was revived with naloxone, the second time in two weeks Cook County Sheriff’s Police
used the opioid overdose antidote to save someone’s life, Sheriff Thomas J. Dart announced today.
At approximately 11 a.m. on Wednesday, sheriff’s deputies at the Skokie Courthouse received a
report of a man having a medical emergency in the men’s restroom. Arriving deputies found an
Evanston Police officer and a fellow Sheriff’s deputy attempting to wake up the unresponsive man,
who was lying on the bathroom floor. Suspected heroin, a syringe and other items were also found on
the floor.

A Cook County Sheriff’s Police commander who was in the building arrived with a naloxone nasal
spray and administered it to the 24-year-old man. He awoke shortly after.

The man, who was at the courthouse for possession of a controlled substance and theft cases, was
taken to an area hospital, where he was treated and released. He was charged on Wednesday with
heroin possession, and was denied bond during a hearing the same day at the Skokie Courthouse.
This is the second time Sheriff’s police administered naloxone, since the department began carrying
the drug in June 2016. On April 23, a Sheriff’s Police officer administered it to a 28-year-old Rockford
woman found unresponsive in a hotel room in unincorporated Elk Grove Township.

In addition to Sheriff’s Police carrying naloxone, the Cook County Sheriff’s Office and Cermak Health
Services – a division of the Cook County Health and Hospitals System – have a naloxone distribution
program at Cook County Jail, in which kits are given to previously identified detainees upon their
release from custody. The program’s goal is to prevent overdose deaths of those leaving the jail, so
they have the opportunity to seek treatment.

Since the program’s launch on Aug. 1, 2016, more than 2,900 detainees have been trained on how to
use naloxone, and Cook County Jail staff have distributed more than 1,700 kits.